Is it possible that your company is overreacting and abandoning a working solution for an unfamiliar and costly migration to a potential solution?
Would your decision be different if Apple licenses OS X Server to, say, IBM, and uses proven integrators like Unisys? This could offer your company a better solution than you currently enjoy -- e.g. 24/7 4 hour response service.
I don't think Apple handled this very well!
As an AAPL shareholder and Apple amature-evangelist I hope Apple resolves this to your and others' satisfaction.
.
Thanks for your reply. Yes, it certainly is possible that we are overreacting and the decision isn't set in stone as it is a long term solution, but we simply have no faith in Apple's commitment any more. If Apple were to license OSX Server to be used on 3rd party hardware and/or in virtualised environments, that would at least provide some indication that Apple is serious in its commitment to OSX Server at a higher level than workgroups or small shops and would certainly influence our decision, but that is sadly not the case currently.
If Apple were to license OSX and acknowledge that they made a mistake in the way this announcement was made, we might have some faith in them. Currently, we are sceptical that they are even going to carry on with OSX Server in its current form.
This all true, but it still involves workarounds that we are not comfortable with. Having to use a combination of SNMP and a Raritan power management device is fine, but involves more effort and cost compared to the ease of use of a solution like Apple's LOM.
In addition to this Mac Pros simply do not fit in our racks in the number in which we need them.
In short, again, neither the Mac pro nor the Mac mini is an acceptable solution.
If you have a need for enough servers that the additional 10U per server pair is unacceptable then that's your organization's choice to make. I would imagine the migration costs to your organization switching to a windows environment will be significant. I'd look hard and long at other UNIX's and Linux before I went windows only (shutters).
Fact is, a good IT department would have thought of contingencies should anything like this arise. i literally received 3 Xserves and 2 promise arrays on Friday when this news hit. Did we consider returning them? Maybe fore a split second but the reality is that these Xserves I'm looking at right now, still in box, will last many years, just like the other 3 we have in a rack right now. We will not even be upgrading their OS. Most servers don't ever see an OS upgrade, there's no reason. When the time comes to start planning their replacement, who knows what Apple will have to service the enterprise data centers. If Apple can't accommodate us, there will be other Unix or Windows solutions. The custom Mac software we have running will be replaced either way.
I guess I would be singing a different tune if i was planning more purchases in the first half of 2011.
1) it is not commercially viable for Apple to create server hardware. It's 5% profit business and Apple has lost enthusiasm for competing in such markets.
2) Apple could irritate some people in the enterprise community by discontinuing the server hardware. The Mac Pro is a beast of a workstation but not a server product. That irritation could limit the use of Macs as client machines in Enterprise environments.
Surely the right solution is to licence Mac OS X Server to a partner hardware vendor?
This seems like a win win solution.
C.
I think you are spot on with #'s 1 & 2. But, why would the hardware vendor partner with apple? Hardware vendors make their money on software licensing and professional services not server hardware. What would be in it for them? Why would they have more faith in apple's viability in this space than apple themselves? I wouldn't do it if I were them.
Fact is, a good IT department would have thought of contingencies should anything like this arise. i literally received 3 Xserves and 2 promise arrays on Friday when this news hit. Did we consider returning them? Maybe fore a split second but the reality is that these Xserves I'm looking at right now, still in box, will last many years, just like the other 3 we have in a rack right now. We will not even be upgrading their OS. Most servers don't ever see an OS upgrade, there's no reason. When the time comes to start planning their replacement, who knows what Apple will have to service the enterprise data centers. If Apple can't accommodate us, there will be other Unix or Windows solutions. The custom Mac software we have running will be replaced either way.
I guess I would be singing a different tune if i was planning more purchases in the first half of 2011.
Plus there will likely be a vibrant market for after market parts and support for Xserve should you need to expand your current infrastructure. At my current organization we have some vendor provided software which will only run on RISC servers running HP-UX. You can't buy RISC servers from HP anymore, but you can from after market vendors. We recently upgraded the whole environment to more robust hardware and acquired 24x7 support using after market vendors. We have a migration path onto a different vendor provided solution in the next few years but we are fine until then. Sure the hardware isn't the latest and greatest but the business need is serviced and at the end of the day that's the goal.
I think you are spot on with #'s 1 & 2. But, why would the hardware vendor partner with apple? Hardware vendors make their money on software licensing and professional services not server hardware. What would be in it for them? Why would they have more faith in apple's viability in this space than apple themselves? I wouldn't do it if I were them.
I assumed that a lot of server hardware is bought off the shelf and self-supported.
In that market a hardware vendor could charge a premium on the Apple approved hardware - and make a few dollars more than they would selling a vanilla rackmount server box. If there's a market. Then it would be worth it.
But if you are right and the money is in services and not in hardware sales, then perhaps not.
Wow. Some great comments in this thread from @alexkhan2000 and a few others! Especially that one about Sun getting squashed.
I felt this was going to happen once they d/c'd the XServeRaid.
It's abit sad. It seems like Apple is losing some cred with this move.
I mean, even as a loss-leader product where the Total Economic Effect/Consequences/Multiplier would be much greater than as measured purely in the margin-per-box.
Ie: The way Gillette built its business from the beginning by Giving Away the Handle and 1-3 Blades, and then charging the shit out of you for the successive blade refills.
I feel like Apple is not merely losing a low-margin product/system,
but losing a quasi-philosophical/political Lever that could have been used to steer and influence the misty aethers of ecosystems and causation-strings far and wide in the future.
Smaller businesses with a need for 1 or 2 servers are already using Mac Pros and in some cases Mac Mini servers. Enterprise and education are all about the Xserve and we've seen it first hand with our clients.
What will these people do in 5-10 years with their Promise RAIDs or Xsan systems? Mac Pros have a larger footprint than Xserves, not to mention they fit right along side other equipment in the racks. Their handles are also very uncomfortable.
I've never been a fanboy but have always held Apple in high regard and defended them to friends and family.
I'm pretty pissed off now. Maybe things will change.
youre right. maybe its just a matter of business but and as mac lovers we "should" stand for that, maybe they even dont care a clue cause we are a very small part of their business. then what? EOL XSAN? EOL MACOS SERVER?
its not a good sign that they just discontinued the xserve without any more information. On last time when they dropped mac RAID to become promise raid, dealers and representatives knew about it, but this time it was a secret, few people truly knew about it.
its supposed that they kick our ass repeteadly and we keep loving them? we want a serious answer from apple in terms of compatibility and a trustable roadmap to keep the faith in them.
I work at a small liberal arts college with a mixed IT environment. We have three Xserve's and while we have many more Windows based servers (a choice made before my time), the Xserve's manage our 200+ Mac's. They also represent a better deal because we don't have to pay for CAL's. If you use the Xserve or are concerned about the future of Mac OS X Server please let Apple know:
Comments
I understand!
Is it possible that your company is overreacting and abandoning a working solution for an unfamiliar and costly migration to a potential solution?
Would your decision be different if Apple licenses OS X Server to, say, IBM, and uses proven integrators like Unisys? This could offer your company a better solution than you currently enjoy -- e.g. 24/7 4 hour response service.
I don't think Apple handled this very well!
As an AAPL shareholder and Apple amature-evangelist I hope Apple resolves this to your and others' satisfaction.
.
Thanks for your reply. Yes, it certainly is possible that we are overreacting and the decision isn't set in stone as it is a long term solution, but we simply have no faith in Apple's commitment any more. If Apple were to license OSX Server to be used on 3rd party hardware and/or in virtualised environments, that would at least provide some indication that Apple is serious in its commitment to OSX Server at a higher level than workgroups or small shops and would certainly influence our decision, but that is sadly not the case currently.
If Apple were to license OSX and acknowledge that they made a mistake in the way this announcement was made, we might have some faith in them. Currently, we are sceptical that they are even going to carry on with OSX Server in its current form.
This all true, but it still involves workarounds that we are not comfortable with. Having to use a combination of SNMP and a Raritan power management device is fine, but involves more effort and cost compared to the ease of use of a solution like Apple's LOM.
In addition to this Mac Pros simply do not fit in our racks in the number in which we need them.
In short, again, neither the Mac pro nor the Mac mini is an acceptable solution.
If you have a need for enough servers that the additional 10U per server pair is unacceptable then that's your organization's choice to make. I would imagine the migration costs to your organization switching to a windows environment will be significant. I'd look hard and long at other UNIX's and Linux before I went windows only (shutters).
I guess I would be singing a different tune if i was planning more purchases in the first half of 2011.
I am not an expert in this stuff.
But it seems to me that..
1) it is not commercially viable for Apple to create server hardware. It's 5% profit business and Apple has lost enthusiasm for competing in such markets.
2) Apple could irritate some people in the enterprise community by discontinuing the server hardware. The Mac Pro is a beast of a workstation but not a server product. That irritation could limit the use of Macs as client machines in Enterprise environments.
Surely the right solution is to licence Mac OS X Server to a partner hardware vendor?
This seems like a win win solution.
C.
I think you are spot on with #'s 1 & 2. But, why would the hardware vendor partner with apple? Hardware vendors make their money on software licensing and professional services not server hardware. What would be in it for them? Why would they have more faith in apple's viability in this space than apple themselves? I wouldn't do it if I were them.
Fact is, a good IT department would have thought of contingencies should anything like this arise. i literally received 3 Xserves and 2 promise arrays on Friday when this news hit. Did we consider returning them? Maybe fore a split second but the reality is that these Xserves I'm looking at right now, still in box, will last many years, just like the other 3 we have in a rack right now. We will not even be upgrading their OS. Most servers don't ever see an OS upgrade, there's no reason. When the time comes to start planning their replacement, who knows what Apple will have to service the enterprise data centers. If Apple can't accommodate us, there will be other Unix or Windows solutions. The custom Mac software we have running will be replaced either way.
I guess I would be singing a different tune if i was planning more purchases in the first half of 2011.
Plus there will likely be a vibrant market for after market parts and support for Xserve should you need to expand your current infrastructure. At my current organization we have some vendor provided software which will only run on RISC servers running HP-UX. You can't buy RISC servers from HP anymore, but you can from after market vendors. We recently upgraded the whole environment to more robust hardware and acquired 24x7 support using after market vendors. We have a migration path onto a different vendor provided solution in the next few years but we are fine until then. Sure the hardware isn't the latest and greatest but the business need is serviced and at the end of the day that's the goal.
...and yet the stock rises. Quite amazing.
Not being an investor...that benefits me how exactly???
I think you are spot on with #'s 1 & 2. But, why would the hardware vendor partner with apple? Hardware vendors make their money on software licensing and professional services not server hardware. What would be in it for them? Why would they have more faith in apple's viability in this space than apple themselves? I wouldn't do it if I were them.
I assumed that a lot of server hardware is bought off the shelf and self-supported.
In that market a hardware vendor could charge a premium on the Apple approved hardware - and make a few dollars more than they would selling a vanilla rackmount server box. If there's a market. Then it would be worth it.
But if you are right and the money is in services and not in hardware sales, then perhaps not.
C.
I felt this was going to happen once they d/c'd the XServeRaid.
It's abit sad. It seems like Apple is losing some cred with this move.
I mean, even as a loss-leader product where the Total Economic Effect/Consequences/Multiplier would be much greater than as measured purely in the margin-per-box.
Ie: The way Gillette built its business from the beginning by Giving Away the Handle and 1-3 Blades, and then charging the shit out of you for the successive blade refills.
I feel like Apple is not merely losing a low-margin product/system,
but losing a quasi-philosophical/political Lever that could have been used to steer and influence the misty aethers of ecosystems and causation-strings far and wide in the future.
Oh well...
What will these people do in 5-10 years with their Promise RAIDs or Xsan systems? Mac Pros have a larger footprint than Xserves, not to mention they fit right along side other equipment in the racks. Their handles are also very uncomfortable.
I've never been a fanboy but have always held Apple in high regard and defended them to friends and family.
I'm pretty pissed off now. Maybe things will change.
its not a good sign that they just discontinued the xserve without any more information. On last time when they dropped mac RAID to become promise raid, dealers and representatives knew about it, but this time it was a secret, few people truly knew about it.
its supposed that they kick our ass repeteadly and we keep loving them? we want a serious answer from apple in terms of compatibility and a trustable roadmap to keep the faith in them.
KB
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/bringbackxserve/
Please read, sign if you agree, and forward the URL to other concerned parties. Be sure to look at the other petition's as well. Thanks!